


Mockingbird: The Wilderness Years

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychological Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-03-21 09:31:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3687177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small works about Bobbi before during and after the Invasion and the events of Winter Soldier, leading up to meeting Hawkeye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Huntingbird's End

"Oh, goody, another clandestine meeting in another windowless underground room. Go to London, they said, it'll be glamorous they said," Bobbi Morse quipped as she took her seat, a ceramic mug of very strong tea clutched in her hand.

Commander Lance Hunter snorted from the other side of the long table. "No one ever said that to you, Bob. Daydreams don't count."

She stuck her tongue out at him, which made him frown. He frowned because he suddenly remembered stuff she could do with her tongue and it made him physically uncomfortable in the pant region.

"Dr. Morse, while you are the only American in the room and thus are our only source of delightful informality, we do need to start our clandestine meeting now," said Director Radcliffe gently. Everyone liked Morse--she'd been the best SHIELD liaison MI-13 had seen in years. She was officially in England teaching a biochemistry course at a local college...that didn't really exist except on paper. For the last eight months, she'd been helping Hunter and his adjunct STRIKE team corral a nasty band of techno-terrorists; 100% capture/kill rate. No civilian casualties and she'd saved Hunter's life personally once. They had just wrapped the project and Morse was in limbo, still working but uncertain if she was going to be recalled.

The fact that she and Hunter had started "seeing" each other after she saved him was an open, indulged secret. They were intelligent and discrete and very private about it. Everyone in the room--all the various heads of departments reporting to or working with their team--had been petitioning to have her seconded permanently. 

Hunter--now standing to start his debriefing presentation--had been petitioning her personally, too. He'd done the espionage equivalent of asking her to marry him -- told her his full legal name and date of birth. She'd responded in a less verbal manner that had left him happy...but vaguely worried.

He was half way through the opening rundown of the threat assessment--she was tapping on her tablet, getting ready to stand up--when a cell phone rang in a weird repeating pattern.

Her phone.

Everyone whipped around to look at her--the phone should not even have had signal down here. What they saw was an abandoned tablet and a chair in the process of tipping backwards; the door was flung open.

Morse was gone.

*****  
Bobbi sprinted to the stairs, bypassing the elevator. Her electronic pass would get her into almost anywhere in the building and she didn't have time to sign in and out.

_Sorry, Lancelot. I don't think we'll be shacking up in the family castle._ she muttered in her head, taking the stairs five at a time, using walls and railings to climb to the surface in seconds. That ring meant the world might be about to end and as much fun as she was having, the world came first.

Outside she found her road bike and barely waited for the guard to lift the barrier before she was out of the parking lot, headed for Heathrow. Her wireless headset came on as soon as she was clear of the MI-13 building. "Mockingbird, Agent 19, coming in hot from Juliet Oscar Echo. Authorization Alpha Alpha Zulu 9393465. Coulson, now," she snapped at the communications operator who answered.

"He's talking to Black Widow."

In the background, she heard Phil's voice drifting _"Put the woman on the phone..._

"Hill then. Or Fury."

"Hill's still at the mesa, digging out agents."

" _Then Fury, you fucking puppy_ " she snarled. The comm op sounded just a little too casual about the whole thing.

Digging out agents? At the Mesa? Oh, gods, Hawkeye and Selvig had been at the Mesa. The Tesseract project...

Fury's voice barked in her ears. "You're headed in?"

"Yes, director, you want me in New York, Boston, where?"

"New York. I'm activating the Initiative and you're in."

"Nick? Barton? Is he--"

"He's been compromised."

"The hell does that mean, Nick?"

"He's being mind controlled by a god--Loki. He shot me and the Mesa is just...gone. They have the Tesseract."

"You're activating the Avengers? Do _they_ know that?"

"Widow's going for Banner; Phil's got Stark. I'm headed to Rogers right now."

"Wakanda, Nick. I can detour to the embassy right now. Stephen Strange. I've got his phone number, yeah he'll be pissed we outed him but fucking hell a god? Or better yet, let me call Danny Rand. He'll come if I ask, I know, I know, he's a security risk we just need him to punch things--." 

"No. Just get back here. Get to New York and we'll have a jet waiting to get you to the Carrier."

"Copy, boss."

Bobbi, weaving through traffic at speeds so high no one could report her plate--not that it would have mattered, any police officer running it would get back a hit with so much Interpol weight on it they'd never even START a pursuit--made it to Heathrow in record time. She ditched the bike in the law enforcement parking spaces at the international terminal (it would get impounded and returned to MI-13) and made her way inside to small phone card retailer. The heavy set man behind the counter grunted at her. She looked up at the retina scanner hidden in the surveillance system. He grunted again and slapped a laptop bag onto the counter.

Bobbi grabbed it, flipped it open as she walked away--passport in one of her 'clean' aliases, freshly updated, with entry and exit stamps indicating a business traveler, top of the line computer loaded with software appropriate to a financial advisor, wad of cash, open-ended first class ticket to New York. Non Special Ops got coach. She was dressed correctly for the image at least, not in her usual ragged t shirts and jeans.

She pulled out her cellphone just before going into the secured area, took a deep breath and dialed Lance's number. He answered with "What the fuck, Bob?"

"What's above Defcon 1 sport?"

There was silence on the other end, then:

"That bad?"

"End of the world."

"So, you're not just trying to get out of moving in with me?"

"I would have been more suave about that."

"Yeah. You usually are. When are you coming back?"

He didn't even sound hopeful. He sounded like he was testing her and they both knew she was going to fail.

"When it's over, I'll see you again," she said in a voice so gentle no one but one of her (rare) lovers would even have recognized it was her.

"We'll always have Franny' s," he responded equally gently.

She heard the door closing in his voice and her heart cracked, but did not break. They were a volatile couple, which was fun but wearing. He didn't "get" her, often surprised and slightly ashamed of her boldness, shocked by her willingness to use violence as a solution and a release. And she was still skittish--eight years later--of charismatic, brooding men. The sex was great but when they talked it was more across each other than to each other.

Pornography they could do; poetry was not on the menu.

She sighed again. 

"I'll be in touch...when I can, Lance. And--"

"Yeah, Bobbi?" He sounded tired and sad.

"It was fun."

"That it was, that it was. Go save the world, love."

Bobbi stayed awake the whole flight, playing games on her computer and checking her phone surreptitiously. Coulson texted her a few times with placeholding updates and then just stopped. Hill, Fury, no one was answering her. She got off the plane at JFK in a tizzy--her passport got her through border security in record time and there was a set of car keys in the back pocket of the laptop bag. 

She was exhausted, heart-sick and terrified by the radio silence. It was no excuse but she missed the tail she'd picked up until she was almost at the long term parking lot. She found three more, not unreasonably amateur, on her way out: spotters. She took Rockaway south and then west, headed away from the city. From the visible consternation on the "guard" at the last entrance, they had not been expecting it. 

They hit her near Fort Tilden, in a Park Service vehicle. They literally hit her, coming out of a blind corner and clipping the rear of her rental, spinning her out on the side of the road to bottom out on gravel and dead grass. Bobbi killed the engine, unhooked her seat belt and was out of the car running before she registered that her right hand was not working correctly, broken fingers. She was on a street of residential houses, it was the middle of the day, the sound of the car accident was attracting attention.

No one picked up her emergency call. She was surrounded by civilians, injured, unarmed, single and the world was maybe ending.

"Fuck it," she muttered and turned around.

There were two men in Park Service uniforms advancing on her and she figured there had to be at least four more circling around behind her. People were coming out onto their front steps. The mantle of Mockingbird dropped over her shoulders and she took two running steps towards her pursuers. They both responded by setting themselves into fighting stances. 

She grinned, wildly, happily, letting all the energy from her conversation with Hunter, the fear at the radio silence, the concern over what had happened at the Mesa flow into her fists. 

Hand to hand combat favored the bigger, stronger...or malicious opponent. Bobbi was big and very strong for a woman, very skilled and very very malicious. The first guy went down hard, her bladed fingers slashing across his eyes, spinning around him to put his body between her and the other man. When his hands came up to protect his face, she grabbed his arm, braced it on her shoulder and punched up from underneath his tricep to break his jaw and then snapped his elbow downwards. He fell screaming and she flung him away like so much trash. He'd probably never use the arm again.

Civilians were screaming and shouting now, she could see people on phones. The other man snarled at her, his hand going down to his firearm.

"Go ahead, asshole. If you wanted me dead, you'd have already shot me. I want to get arrested--they'll let me go. But I don't think that's actually your uniform, is it?"

He drew and fired.

It was--as it turned out--a modified tazer. She figured that out just before she lost consciousness.

*****

Bobbi woke up shivering, naked, in a blank bare room lit brightly by fluorescents covered in heavy duty bars. A large television was set into one wall, also covered with bars. It was tuned to CNN, the volume was at full, excited nonsensical ranting. An alien invasion fleet was pouring out of the sky above the Stark Tower in New York.

She could see a small group of people gathered together on the causeway: a man in blue, a green monster. Red and gold and silver armor next to each other, one of them carrying a hammer. A lithe figure in black and a man with a bow: Hawkeye was up and fighting.

Her heart leapt to see them and broke worse than it had with Hunter to know whomever had captured her had cost her the chance to be there, to be fighting for her life next to heroes.

They had cost her the Avengers.

The TV volume dimmed and a calm, smooth male voice spoke over the intercom.

"Dr. Morse, you should be thanking us. We're keeping you out of that melee."

"Sure, sport. Come in here so I can thank you personally," she said sweetly, her smile predatory.

"Oh, I will. Eventually. You're still a little...agitated at the moment. I think you need some more alone time. Try to rest." His voice was dripping with oily menace and when it cut out, the volume of the TV increased again, louder than before.

Bobbi nodded firmly. She knew where she stood now.

Sensory overload. Sleep deprivation. Psychological torture, before the physical stuff started.

They'd slip, eventually. They'd get close enough to touch and that was close enough to kill.

She could wait. 

She was Mockingbird. She would have been an Avenger--they had made a mistake in choosing what to show her now. For all the despair, it brought hope, too. It reminded her of what she was, what she did.

She could become anything she needed to be.

Now she needed to be stone, to endure. 

Mockingbird settled down against a wall to watch the Avengers save the world.


	2. Breaking Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do with a broken Agent, if you're Nick Fury?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty harrowing. Be warned.

The head nurse looked into the single eye of the tall, cold-faced man in her office, then looked hurriedly away.

"Mr. Smith, I, ah, I should warn you that patient is very...volatile. Violent even. We've been following the protocols you set out when she was brought in a month ago but since the first day she woke up it's been very difficult--"

"In what way?" Mr. 'Smith' said carefully, his voice as dark as his skin. He was preternaturally still, sitting like a statue and following her motions only with his eye.

"Well, she broke all the fluorescent lights in the hallway, not the bulbs, she actually got in and ripped out all the wiring one night, we still haven't had a chance to fix them. She won't let the orderlies into the room at all; we thought maybe, given her injuries, she was having issues with men, we tried send in all women, that didn't help. We can coax her out into the yard at night, as long as the outside lights are off, and we've been doing the cleaning then but sometimes she won't do even that. She barely eats and insists on doing her own first aid on those...cuts and burns she had when she came in. She's going to have scars on her neck, now. And--"

She stopped, looking right away, her face tense and terrified.

"And?"

"And sometimes we can't find her. At night. She'll be back in her room when its day but she'll be gone before then."

"How would you know that she's gone at night?"

"Ah, well...we aren't monitoring her room if that's what you mean--"

"You better not be. Answer the question."

"One of my nurses, Claudia, she's Pilipino. She heard the patient muttering in Tagalog at one point and answered her; they've become friendly, in a way. Claudia is about the only person she hasn't scared out of the room. Sometimes she stops by at the end of her shift to make sure the patient is okay and more than once the room was empty. We have no idea where she's going or how she's getting past the desk. None of the outside cameras ever see her. "

"Take that nurse off her case."

"But--"

"Take her off."

"Yes. Sir."

"I'll go to see her now, keep the corridor clear until I'm gone."

He stood up, his long black duster swaying heavily and exited. The hallways of the Roseberry Private Treatment Center in upstate New York were immaculately clean, with tasteful decorations and muted colors spoiled by the harsh glare of the overhead lights, right up until he got to the farthest, quietest wing in the building. The ground floor corridor that extended abruptly from the building was bathed in darkness, only a few pools of light from makeshift floor lamps in places. Right at the very end, past the open doors of every other room (all empty), room number 1919 was sealed off from the rest of the world. It was nearly silent here, only the very soft tip-tap of his feet audible.

He pushed open the door onto blackness. 

Nick Fury sighed and stepped into the void, shutting out the light behind him.

When the sound of the door closing had ended, he could hear her sigh from the corner, farthest from a single heavily draped and shuttered window. He knew damn well she did it out of politeness, so he could locate her, which worried him. The woman he knew before would have been delighting in hiding from him. 

"Hey, boss, nice to not see you." Her voice was tired and small and sad but contained a glimmer of her personality. 

"What's with the vandalism?"

"I...my eyes hurt. Fluorescent light makes it worse."

He took a deep breath. Her answer to what he was about to say would make or break his plans for her.

"Your eyes are fine, Morse. It's in your head."

She laughed, cold and bitter. "I fucking know that Nick. I'm cracked, not broken."

Knowing she couldn't see him, he closed his eye and shook his head in relief.

"I saw that," she said primly.

He felt around till he found the bed and sat down. "No you didn't. You were fishing."

"Yeah, but you're not sure are you?" 

And _that_ was his Agent 19 back, pure snark. 

"Nick, what happened out there that wasn't on the TV?" Her voice sounded stronger, more purposeful.

He gave her the rundown on the backside of the Invasion, on the near-wreck of the helicarrier, the infighting Loki had caused...Coulson's death. He waited while she cried then, softly, for a long time. He told her the Avengers had split up, Thor had returned home. Hawkeye had taken extended leave but was staying in touch. Black Widow had thrown herself back on duty. Stark was Stark, Banner was gone. 

"And Rogers? What's he doing?" Morse said in a careful voice.

"Working for us, now. For the most part."

"It won't last," she said absently. "He's not going to go from running that team to being your lap dog, you got maybe two years before he tells you to shove it. But while you've got him, you need to tell him to eat more." Her voice took on a sharper tone, nearly obsessional. It was chilling in the darkness. His eye was adjusting a little and he could make out movement in the corner, her fidgeting. 

"What? Eat more?"

"Y-y--y-y-eah. He needs to e-e-e-eat more. C-c-c-c-could see, you know, on the t-t-t-t-television, when they w-w-w-w-were softening me u-u-u-u-p..." Her voice was growing distant and vague, as the stutter burst over her normally smooth speech. 

Fury felt his heart skip a beat. His hand went down to his pocket, to the handgun nestled there. As good as he was, in this space, in the dark--well, he'd seen her field evalues, he'd seen her training videos, he'd seen her fight for real. She was better than him. Even injured and mind-broken, she'd win.

"H-h-h-h-his wrists are too thin and it's n-n-n-n-not like being aaaaaaa m-m-m-machine, he heals f-f-f-f-fast but it's gotta come from s-s-s-s-somewhere, he n-n-n-needs calories. You promise to t-t-t-t-tell him, Nick?"

"I promise," he said softly.

The air moved and he was face down on the bed, the handgun plucked out of his pocket, her knee solidly in his back. 

"If you were going to put me down, Nick, why pay for the fancy room here?" She popped the magazine out of the gun and he heard it dropped contemptuously next to his head, then move away from him into the darkness again.

A new voice from her mouth, one he didn't hear often. Not Bobbi Morse, the light-hearted joker. Not Agent 19, his best analyst. This was Mockingbird, the part of her that had put her on the Avengers Initiative short list.

The part of her he'd been afraid had been broken by the people who'd captured and tortured her for a week. It killed him they didn't know who that had been. Yet, anyway.

"I have to have contingencies, Morse. And if you never heal up, we'll pay for you. SHIELD will pay. You've done your duty to the letter."

"Until the Invasion, when I suddenly disappeared, right?"

He heard it then, just a little too late, the decision, the menace. His hand found the object on the bedspread. A hairbrush. 

The cold muzzle of his own weapon touched the back of his shaved head.

"I'm dead, aren't I Nick? You told the world--Hunter, cause I know he asked, I know it--you told them all I was dead, which is why you stuck me here in nowheresville. So either you think I got turned in there or--"

"What did they want, Morse?

She hissed and he knew she was distracted and he could have taken the gun out of her hand but if he did he'd probably have to shoot her.

*****  
The light never dimmed, the harsh glare seeping under her eyelids even with her face turned to the floor and her hair around her cheeks and her hands over the edges, pushing, always pushing the bright horrible light out of her eyes, away, away, it would creep inside her optic nerve, she knew, if she let it, and burn itself into her brain, till all she would ever see was the blueish pulsing glow.

The noise from the television she could make that go away, turn that into a scrambled jumble of liquid syllables, like it had been for her as a child when she would sneak out into the Manila streets and just listen to the words, the rhythm of the world that was not her sanitized, lonely life at boarding school. Time passed. Someone opened the door and left a tray of oatmeal and a bottle of water, which she glanced at through eye lids squeezed mostly shut and ignored. Sometime later a large group of people came in the room and force fed her the same cold, stale food, too many, so many, all young and strong and with military bearings and their skin hot, hot like a fire, all of them burning like the light burned her skin now. The man who'd spoken to her from the loud speaker when she first woke up was outside the door, laughing at her, she could hear him, his voice smooth and sweet like caramel and she hated him. A woman was with him, her voice worried and ashamed? Yes, ashamed. 

"Extremis," the woman's voice whined, "is mine, my project. We don't need her. She's too dangerous. I can get it stable."

The man cut her off, cold as ice under his smoothness.

"If we can turn her, she can fix more than your work," he said before the hot hard hands forced her to sit up. She fought them and she hurt more than one of them but they still won. Afterwards, they wiped her face with a dirty towel and dropped her back on the floor, shaking and afraid. Then it was the light and the sound again. She watched the TV for a moment, watched the endless replays of the Avengers saving the world. She noticed--she always noticed--how good looking Hawkeye was. She'd thought about approaching him before, when they were both at the Special Ops training centre, or Headquarters, but her heart was still hurting. She was a coward about love, now, Paul had done that to her. _Lance_ , her heart wailed. _I'm sorry I treated you so badly._

She hadn't really, but it was something to live for, to fight for. To get back to him and say sorry. And maybe have break up sex....

She didn't want to stay with him; just apologize, oh that was interesting...she wanted the Avengers. She wanted to be part of that, wanted to see how her skills would fit in, she was a generalist she could do nearly everything well, though maybe not the best at anything, she wanted to see up close how well they all fought together, Black Widow's grace and skill, Thor's power, Iron Man's agility, the Hulk's ferocity. She wanted to spar Rogers (skinny, too skinny, he needs to eat more did no one think to tell him that in eighty years not once a person could have told him that?). She wanted to watch the way Hawkeye's fingers would just slip off the bow string like he wasn't even in control anymore, like the arrow fired itself, he had such beautiful hands, such beautiful arms...so beautiful...

That had been--she had done the sleep deprivation training that you had to sign forty pages of permissions and releases for, she knew what it felt like at twelve hours, twenty four, forty eight--maybe three days ago so she was legally insane now, which was good because for her it meant she stopped feeling pain much and her senses dimmed and the universe got light and airy and when they opened the door to feed her again she just huddled on the ground and acted catatonic and didn't react to anything they did, not the blows and the being stabbed with sharp things and that seemed to make up their minds so they dragged in a chair and a bunch of equipment and started to torture her in earnest. She screamed and cried, Bobbi did, while Agent 19 catalogued everything clinically, injury by injury, abuse by abuse. Mockingbird watching silently in the corner, soothing her other selves when it got unbearable.

_Wait. Endure. I can't help you now but I'm never going to leave you. Be brave, Bobbi. I'm here when the moment comes._

The man with the caramel voice seemed to like it when they burned her the most, though the electrical shocks got him all happy too. By then she couldn't open her eyes anymore because the light would attack her if she did so she still didn't know what he looked like but his voice was burned into her mind, like the heat on her neck, the pads under her jaw making her teeth snap, threatening her face with sharp pointy things, like she was some debutante to care about her face, it meant nothing to her and they seemed to realize that and she was more than a little shocked they weren't going for the obvious with all this and just gang rape her and then one day, it was days for all that, broken by a few bathroom breaks (humiliating) and water, no more food, and she was slumped in the chair with the plastic zip straps digging into her arms, cutting her till she could smell her own blood and a few of the hot-skinned men came in, furtive and hushed and pulled her out of the room, away from the sound and the vicious predatory light and took her to a little supply room and tried to rape her and Mockingbird came to her, tall and strong and brave and killed them all without opening her eyes, one by one in a few seconds, three of them and the fourth by the door, just moving calm and smooth, hands on necks and joints snapping, throats crushed. One turned out to be a woman, as hot and cold and evil as the others but her clothes fit well enough, and she had dark glasses in her pocket and Mockingbird could fight the light with them covering her face like armor.

She took their weapons and walked out into the blessed night, escaping from her prison, which turned out to be an abandoned office/warehouse building in Newark. There was a gas station a few blocks away and when the young thugs hanging around out side tried to hassle her she broke the leader's arm in five places and took a quarter from his pocket, Mockingbird taunting them the whole time until they ran away.

Then Agent 19 dialed the number she had to dial when something like this happened and Mockingbird stepped back with a sigh and Bobbi sat down on the dirty concrete until soon gentle people in paramedic uniforms who were not paramedics came and put her in the back of an ambulance and she curled on her side and all the hers slept for the first time in a week.

*****  
"They wanted Doctor Morse, the biochemist. Not Agent 19 or Mockingbird. They wanted to fix something called...Extreme? I can't...words didn't mean much by then, Nick. The light was attacking me and I had to fight it off." 

She walked around him and threw open the curtains on the late after noon sunlight. He looked at her steadily, unable to conceal the shock at the horrors etched on her strong, regal face, the pain marked onto her skin. She snorted at him, her mouth quirked.

"Looking particularly hag-like, am I?"

"You look like someone was torturing you for a week."

"How oddly accurate then."

He stood up and studied her. She was very tall and despite her ordeal still strong looking. "You've been sneaking out at night to work out, haven't you?"

She laughed, a sweet normal sound, the warm sunlight caressing her face. "I go into woods and lift heavy objects, fight bears, like good peasant woman."

"The mental stuff?"

"Comes and goes. Mostly goes, lately, though that wretched stutter is back, I had that as a kid."

Fury glared at her. "You were fucking with me the whole time?"

She stretched. "Kinda, sorta. Figured if you thought I was loopy you might be more forthcoming. I am 'dead' right?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I need you for something, deep cover, deeper than shadow protocol. Something we can't let out of the bag and it's something you're uniquely set up to deal with. It came to light just after the Invasion...it looks like someone out there figured we'd be distracted by, you know, the almost end of the world."

"What is it?"

"You know already. You were working on it before the universal shit hit the fan." He walked over to join her at the window, looking out at the peaceful green grass outside. 

"Yeah, hurrah for the red white and blue...does he know someone's trying to make more of him?"

"No, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"That's a mistake but you're still the boss, boss."

He studied her and shook his head. "Glad you still know that."

"As Radcliffe over in London said many times, my informality is part of my winsome charm, Nick."

"You can't tell Hunter--"

"Yeah, then I quit." She smiled at him sweetly, matching his glare for a long time in silence, neither of them backing down. 

Finally he shrugged. "One call, he can know you're alive, nothing else."

"No break-up sex?"

He shrugged again. "It's your life on the line out there. Yours and your new team."

"Oh, goody, I get minions!" She clapped her hands like a child.

He reached into his duster, stowed his gun and pulled out a file folder. She took it and started to speed read the contents, eyes calm and focused. 

"Come on, Agent 19, you've got work to do. I'll drive."


	3. Iron Fist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Bobbi got out of South America

Mockingbird spun in the middle of the last group of defenders, her combat batons moving so fast they were a blur. She'd come in from behind them while the rest of her team kept them distracted. Any of the guards still on their feet went down like wheat under a thresher. Last man down, probably dead since his forehead was concave now, she stilled, panting hard. Close combat was her purview, as always. The rest of the team were all fighters but not all STRIKE or special ops. Mulhoney was Tech Section; Ravenswood did languages and encryption. 

They both emerged from behind Takada (the other combat specialist), D'hani (the breacher) and Constable (punching things expert)--mostly from behind Constable who was a really big guy--and grinned at her. 

"Damn, Morse, that's so freaking pretty," Mulhoney said in an admiring tone. 

"Angel of Death, you are," D'hani laughed in that weirdly high voice of hers, shouldering her shotgun as she straightened. 

"Thanks guys," Mockingbird. "I want us to go out on a high note." 

A flurry of looks were exchanged. "Seriously?" said Takada, as he methodically checked the downed guards for weapons. "This is really it?" 

"Yeah, this is the last piece. One and done." 

"Wow," Ravenswood stopped what she was doing at the main computer bank to look Mockingbird in the eye. "And it only took two years." 

"I know. We haven't even had time to started really annoying each other yet," Bobbi said with a laugh. 

While the rest of the team cleaned up the guards, Bobbi and the two technicians cleaned out the computer banks in the secret lab. Bobbi did her usual quick search through the data, noticing patterns and new information; yes, this would be the last piece. She closed her eyes a moment. The moment of truth was about to arrive: what did Fury intend to do with the data she'd collected for him? Use it? Or destroy it? 

She stood up, stowing her batons in their thigh holsters and walking back towards the main doors. These enclosed labs messed with her head, since the Invasion; she needed to breathe some fresh air, even super moist South American jungle air, and think. 

Just as she reached the door, her personal radio crackled and locked open. She could hear the static from all the others too. 

"What the he-" Mulhoney said, his voice irritated. 

Then Captain America started speaking and Bobbi realized she was hearing an open transmission on every emergency channel SHIELD had. As she listened to his voice, his deep, inspiring voice destroy her world, tear it to pieces and stomp on the remains, a series of small, disturbing clues about the five people behind her dropped into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and she wondered if she could make it out of the room before they realized she now knew they were all HYDRA and then she heard D'hani cock her combat shotgun and she was diving forward when it went off and her left shoulder exploded in a welter of blood and fragments of cloth and the dive became a fall, stunned and bleeding and maybe crippled and dying. 

"Fucking hell, Pierce wanted her alive, D'hani," Constable snarled, barely audible through the ringing in her ears. "No one else knows half of this shit." 

"She figured it out, dude. Figured dead is better than running," D'hani responded. 

Bobbi lay very still and tried to figure out if she _was_ dying or not. There was a lot of blood and her head hurt and her left arm was numb. Constable's big hand grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her up, off her feet and she suppressed the scream of agony long enough to shake one of her holdout knives into her right hand and jam it into his eye. The big man dropped her and the impact jarred her whole body and she screamed.

But Mockingbird came to her again and she stayed on her feet.

The knife was still in Constable's eye--not into the brain he was still alive but bleeding and shrieking--and then her right hand found her combat baton and snapped it out and D'hani's arm wasn't ever going to be an arm anymore. The smaller woman stared at the bone sticking out through her uniform and died on the back hand, the front of her face just blood and teeth, dropping like a puppet with cut strings. 

Takada. She had to kill Takada soonest or she was done. The blood pumping out of her shoulder was hot and red. She had to kill them all before she died. No one could get this data back to the Triskelion. 

Mulhoney was in the way and she went over him, knocked him down with a brutal shove, no finesse, no skill just a shoulder into his chest and he went down. Takada had his gun out and despite the agony Mockingbird was there, strong and brave and refusing to fall, refusing to acknowledge the pain, her baton singing in the air, singing like a bird and then she was up close with him. The baton impacted the side of the gun barrel as he pulled the trigger, just enough that is was past her head. His gun went off, she was deaf in that ear now, popped ear drum and more blood on her left side, her heart still beating lungs still pulling air all that mattered she might be a walking corpse but she'd put these traitors down like the rabid dogs they were and he jammed his hand into the mess of her left shoulder and she laughed, laughed because the pain couldn't get any _worse_ and he paused in shock and her good arm wrapped around his throat, hard metal of her baton on the back of his neck, braced on her own chest to make a vise and she turned and he went over her shoulder and it was a dead man that hit the floor, vertebrae shattered and spinal chord severed and Ravenswood died when she straightened up, her hand snapping out and slamming metal into her throat and maybe it would take a few minutes but no oxygen meant no life.

Mockingbird staggered away from the three people she had just killed in maybe twice as many seconds to see Constable clutching his face but staring at her from his one eye and Mulhoney pulling his gun, hands shaking. 

"Just stop, Morse. Just stop and I'll make it clean," Mulhoney was trying to sound tough but his voice was trembling as badly as his hands.

"I'm not Morse, Hydra-boy. This is Mockingbird. And what's going to happen to you will be dirty as hell." 

She smiled, her face a mask of blood and death.

Mulhoney pissed his pants and died in the reek of urine before he even registered that she had moved, her baton slamming his arm up until the bullet he fired went through his own brain and not hers. Constable was still big, still stronger than her, even bleeding and half-blind he should have been able to hurt her, broken and crippled and maybe dying that she was and it didn't matter because it was Mockingbird and not Bobbi he faced.

He would have been able to kill Bobbi, laughing, joking, light-hearted Bobbi--stick-fighter and agent and scientist.

He'd never faced Mockingbird, who was supposed to be an Avenger, Mockingbird the unbreakable, Mockingbird who called Director Fury 'Nick' and was the only person to score higher on the close combat matrix than Black Widow. Mockingbird who walked out of an AIM base after a week of being tortured and put herself back together all alone.

Alone, always alone. She should have had a team, friends, but that had been stolen from her by AIM and now this mission which turned out to be for the enemy of everything she had ever believed in.

She was done believing, done trusting, done obeying. If she lived, she was a free agent. And no one was going to tell her what to do with the data she had.

When Bobbi came back, Constable was dead. He had a lot of broken bones but it was the knife in his eye that killed him. She could remember, in a vague dream-like state, jumping off a chair to push kick the hilt into his skull.

She fell to her knees, whimpering with the pain in her body, the agony in her mind. The light--what little there was--attacked her again as it did sometimes when she was very tired or very scared. She shot out as many fixtures as she could and still see to do what needed to be done.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, the bleeding slowed and stopped. She flexed her left hand, all her fingers moved, her elbow. She wasn't going to try to shoulder yet but there was hope.

None of the others had ever seen her get into her battle gear, the camo-tech infused body suit, the stored weapons. They had never known she wore body armor on every mission, sleek and tight and supportive, the most expensive thing she had ever owned; she had trained in it with fierce concentration until she could move under its extra weight and constriction as though it wasn't there. A SHIELD combat shotgun at point-blank range had been enough to rip through it, to make her bleed; not enough to kill her and perhaps not even cripple. 

Bobbi Morse walked into the jungle night, leaving the lab burning behind her, computer banks melted to slag and five extra bodies piled in the main room. On her way she stripped off every piece of SHIELD gear she had, all the electronics, anything that could be used to trace her. Until she knew who'd won in Washington, she had to assume every one with the eagle on their chest was her enemy.  
*****  
Danny Rand was bored. He knew he'd get no sympathy from anyone he called back in New York and even less from the supermodels lounging about his private beach near Cayenne, French Guiana, which is the only reason he could think of to explain why he was roaming the streets of Village Chinois late at night, looking for trouble.

He'd already stopped two rapes and a mugging when he heard the distinctive sound of breaking glass from the next block. He took off at a lope, moving easily in his casual clothes. He felt both liberated and under-prepared--he didn't have his costume or hand wraps or anything.

But he had his fists.

There was already a brawl going on when he got to the building.

He checked at the mouth of the alley he'd cut through, not quite believing his eyes. 

A blond woman in black and white was methodically beating down a group of looters who had apparently tried to ransack a small store: the owner appeared to be cowering in the doorway. As Danny watched, the woman spun and slammed a metal baton into the back of one of the men, driving him to the ground, then round house kicked another man's legs out from under him. 

Her form was amazing...but broken, almost stuttering. She wasn't using her left arm at all and would occasionally stagger or almost stop, her body eloquent with pain. During one pause she took a hit on the left side from one of the men still standing and nearly fell over, animal noises of agony clear in the night air. She recovered in a front flip and put her back to the door of the store, snarling at the owner in what even Danny could tell was bad French. It was the first time he could see her face and it shocked him.

He'd already made up his mind whos side he was on, that wasn't the issue. The issue was he'd been told this particular woman was dead. 

She sure looked angry, for a corpse.

"Bobbi," he yelled, crossing the distance between him and the attackers still standing in a heartbeat. 

Her head jerked up, her face set in combat mode, unreadable. But her body relaxed and she sagged against the wall.

He took that as an invitation to finish her good work. 

Danny Rand smiled and called his chi, making the name he'd been given in the mountain city real again.

Iron Fist struck and showed no mercy. 

When it was over, and the authorities had belatedly shown up and been paid off by Danny to forget the blue-eyed blond foreigners in the area, he caught Bobbi trying to sneak away in the night, a small bag of first aid supplies from the store clutched in her good hand.

He fell into step beside her and she sighed, looking over at him but not stopping. She looked, frankly, terrible: her face dirty and spotted with dried blood, her clothing ripped and filthy and she was definitely unable to use the left arm.

"Fancy meeting you here," Danny offered tentatively. Bobbi had always intimidated him, mentally. He wasn't dumb, not by a long shot, but three dates had left him reeling from the sheer force of her intellect, the flashing wit and depth of knowledge that he couldn't comprehend. Well, he could, but he was usually three or four beats behind her. They liked each other a lot, though, and a bad romantic fit made a good friendship. She was one of the few people who knew his secret and she'd never betrayed him.

"Danny, thank you but....just leave me alone, okay?" Her voice was cracking and looking at her closer he could see she was on the ragged edge of her ability to cope. He'd always known she was tough--they'd sparred nearly full out often enough that he knew how hard she could hit--but the more he looked the more impressed he was that she was even up and moving.

"I would but, you know, if the zombie apocalypse is starting you could be a buddy and give me a head start."

"What are you---ah, fuck. Fury told you I was dead, didn't he?" She sagged again, her feet moving slower and slower, more pain in each motion than he could have believed.

"Yeah. And yet here we are." He reached out and placed his right fist in her path, the threat in the motion very quiet and very gentle and very unspoken, but still very real. 

She stopped dead, looked down at his hand, up at his face. "The way I feel right now, Rand, you might actually have a shot at beating me."

"Someone else did that for me, I think."

"Yeah, I...Danny, I'm not going to lie. I need help but I need to not get anyone I care about killed more."

He gestured at an alley way and they moved into the cover. "What happened Bobbi? Two years ago we get invaded by aliens, saved by a bunch of people like...well, like me, I figured you'd be in the thick of it, figured you'd call me and nothing. I call your boss and get shuffled around for weeks and then he says you died in the Invasion--"

"Did he tell you in person?"

"What? Yeah."

"Fury forgets not everyone knows the unspoken rules. If I'd actually died or he wanted you to think I had, he'd have sent a letter, an email. Him telling you in person was his way of telling you he was lying."

"You spies are all weird."

"I'm not a spy anymore."

"Then what are you now, Barbarella?" He said it gently, his nickname for her. That reminder of old times, of nights at the dojo, punching each other in the face, laughing, sitting in the hot tub watching movies and drinking beer undid her. Her eyes filled with tears, sparkling but not falling.

"Oh, gods Danny, I'm so alone." She staggered, sobbing. "And there are people hunting me, everyone's hunting me. SHIELD is gone, my own government thinks I'm HYDRA, HYDRA thinks I'm still SHIELD, everyone else either thinks I'm dead or wants to make me dead, I got chased here by a bunch of bounty hunters, it's only been a couple of days and my shoulder won't heal and I don't have any weapons caches in this area and I'm out of bullets and you have to go _away_ I can't let them hurt you."

Danny Rand's right hand, still clenched into a fist, started to glow gently, like a lightening bug. He looked her in the eye, sited on a burnt out steel lamp post and took two running steps towards it. He reared back and punched it, straight and clean and it folded in half like a piece of cardboard. 

He turned back and stared at her defiantly. "I can take care of myself, Bobbi. Let me take care of you. I've got a place near by, you'll be safe there."

She nodded, her mouth starting to smile despite itself. "Of course you do, billionaire playboy. Remind me why we broke up?"

"Because we had more fun sparring than we did kissing."

"Oh, that was fun too."  
*****  
One of the supermodels woke up when Danny and Bobbi dragged into the main living room of the bungalow style beach house. Danny had already called a doctor to come in and look at Bobbi's shoulder so they were sitting in the kitchen trying to pry the blood caked body armor off her torso without badly ripping open the wounds again when the model flounced in, naked and looking perfectly made up despite it being four in the morning.

"Daniel," she trilled in a thick French accent, "what are you doing with this...creature?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, Amana. Go back to bed," Rand said dismissively, barely looking up, concentrating on lifting the edge of Bobbi's sleeve high enough to see under it.

"Wrong answer, Danny," Bobbi muttered to him out of the side of her mouth. "She's going to go ballistic in three two--"

The woman screamed at him in French, gesticulating wildly, as he stared at her with an amazed expression. Bobbi put her head down on the table and started to laugh. 

Danny's plain, friendly face scrunched up in confused wonder at the torrent of abuse being hurled at him by a beautiful naked woman. He quirked his head at her, then looked at Bobbi. "I should be offended by this, right?"

"Yeah," Bobbi said in a muffled voice. "She started on your ancestry, manners and taste in clothes and is now moving on to disparaging your physical prowess in general and your penis in particular."

The model was looking from one of them to the other, her anger abating at the total lack of reaction. She fell silent, mouth open, as she finally seemed to take in Bobbi's battered, bloody state. 

"What? What did you do to this...woman?" she gasped eventually.

"Oh, didn't he tell you? He likes it _really rough_ ," Bobbi said brightly, then laughed again as the woman fled the room.

"Bobbi," Danny growled, before going after the model. By the time he had her soothed down and believing his mostly true story about finding an old friend being attacked by muggers the doctor had arrived and was working steadily on Bobbi's wounds.

He wound up cleaning out a lot of metal shards from her left shoulder but once he was done she could move her arm again. The body armour itself was mostly intact, a miracle, but her jacket was toast. She let Danny give her a long loose leather duster but kept the body suit, wrapping it around her batons and hand guns in the knapsack he also gave her. 

By the time doctor had cleaned and treated her numerous wounds, dosed her with painkillers and anti-biotics and given them wraps for her ribs and splints for her fingers, the bevy of supermodels had been shaken awake and chivvied out of the house by Danny, sent to frolic on the private yacht off shore with promises he'd join them in a day or so, he had business in town.

His business was watching over Bobbi as she slept soundly on his bed, wrapped in a long fluffy robe after her bath. She slept for sixteen hours and ate fresh food for the first time since before she'd killed her whole team. He had cold beer in the fridge. She cried again.

They wound up sitting on the back porch watching the sun rise the next morning. Bobbi had told him a little, only a little, of what had happened to her and just how badly someone wanted the thumb drive she had stashed on her person. He'd offered to take her in, hide her in plain sight as one of his staff, get her back to the States. She'd been tempted but in the end so skittishly terrified of relying on anyone else she'd turned him down.

He hadn't argued and she half-loved him for it. He'd held onto her in the night as she cried one last time about the people she'd killed, the team she'd thought were her friends. Cried at the endless well of lonely agony opened under her. Her world was destroyed, ripped to pieces by the very hero she was struggling to protect, and unlike that night in the Everglades when she shot Paul and ran to Fury she had nothing to fall back on.

Well, she had one thing: a purpose. As she stood in front of the mirror in Danny's villa and traced the marks that would make a map of scars on her skin, broken by the dark archipelagos of her bruises, she came to one conclusion. She would go back to each place she'd been, each secret base, each clandestine lab. She would scour them as clean as she had the last one. The data she'd sent to the Triskelion was incomplete; she'd leave nothing behind that could be used to patch the holes. 

Which meant she had to get to Europe for starters. As she dressed in the lovely expensive clothing Danny had delivered to her that morning as casually as a man dropping off a paper, Bobbi realized she had two things.

A mission. And herself.

She was still Mockingbird. She would adapt: changeable as the wind, supple as the water, deadly as fire, enduring as the rocks of the earth. 

So she sat on the veranda with her old friend and allowed him to help her just far enough to arrange passage as crew on a trans-Atlantic cargo ship headed for Portugal.

He drove her to the docks himself, insisting that she take the clothes he'd bought her, the jacket. Toiletries. A wallet stuffed with euros that she found in the jacket pocket and tried to return to him. His hands had started to glow as he stared her down, his eyes fierce. She laughed and hugged him gingerly, then kissed him full on the mouth. That went on longer than either of them expected and they were both a little breathless when it ended. 

Danny rubbed the back of his neck as he watched her walk away, introduce herself by the name of Petra to the bored crew man at the dock, run up the gangway onto the old ship. She waved at the top and was gone.

He went back into the office of the company and doubled the bribe he'd given them to keep her presence on board the ship quiet and then for good measure had picked up a piece of rebar, bent it into a bow and placed it on the head man's desk.

"Anything happens to her on that ship, that happens to you." Danny Rand was a slender, wiry, pleasant man, his face open and friendly. Iron Fist on the other hand was the Champion of K'un L'un, an Immortal Weapon, the Bearer of the Mark of the Burning Dragon, Shou-Lao the Undying. It was Iron Fist who spoke then and it was Iron Fist who was obeyed to the letter. 

And for the next year and a half, Bobbi Morse, Mockingbird, disappeared into the wilderness.


	4. Lowtown, Madripoor

The Lowtown streets of Madripoor were dangerous for the inhabitants; when incautious tourists from Hightown threaded the needle of civil guards and informal gatekeepers to "check out the local color" not too many of them made it back to their fancy hotels. 

This particular couple hadn't even lasted an hour before they'd picked up an escort of thugs, who'd run them to ground in the alley behind the Princess bar. The woman was backed up against a wall, swinging her fists ineffectually like a toddler; the man was already down and being kicked to death. He was at least smart enough to go into a ball and cover his face. He'd live a few minutes longer that way.

"This isn't a good place, man," hissed one of the thugs, looking around anxiously. "Patch'll-"

"He's out of town. Shen saw him leave and he ain't been back yet. We're fine, we're fine," muttered the leader of the group, Asio, newly jumped up to the position. This particular gang went through leaders at an average of about one every two months, and rank and file quicker than that. It was basically a new gang every other week, and had commensurate loyalties to match.

So when one of the guys guarding the entrance to the dead end alley went flying over Asio's head, his first reaction wasn't to protect his men, it was to find an escape route. He spared a look behind him to see just which of the colorful characters who might be willing to intervene in the assault was coming after him. 

He saw a stranger, a tall, very blond woman wearing a long coat, carrying two dented and battered metal batons. Her face was strong-boned and pale, her eyes covered with yellow tinted goggles. She moved like a fighter and smiled like a lunatic.

"Hey, sport. Wanna dance?" she said in English. Without pausing, she charged into the thick of the fray, ignoring the men just watching in favor of taking out the ones kicking the downed man. Asio watched in startled silence as she deftly, professionally, decimated his crew, leaving several of them clearly dead and most of the rest down and out with broken bones at the minimum. 

She turned and put the couple at her back, the tourist woman sobbing and tending to her partner. There were still five or six of the gang standing. The blond vigilante grinned and shouldered her weapons.

"Guys, really, this isn't going to end well. Just go away, you lost this catch."

Asio pulled his piece and raised it. 

Slightly more than two seconds later, one of the metal batons the woman was holding--after rebounding off both walls of the alley--hit him on the side of the head, crushing his skull.

The rest of them turned and ran, to be picked off themselves as wounded prey by one of the other gangs in the area. 

*****  
Bobbi picked up her thrown baton, wincing at the new and sizable dent in it. She had no more caches left, other than the ones in New York and the last time she'd tried to get back into the States it had cost her a pint of blood and gained her a host of new scars. She needed the data that was being exchanged today, needed to hijack the whole shipment of intell and these dumb tourists had made her nearly _late_.

The woman was babbling thanks to her in a South African accent which Bobbi cut off without hearing. "You have money?" she snapped, making sure the men in the alley were really dead.

"Money? Yes, yes, you can have it all--"

"Not for me you idiot, for a _cab_ ," Bobbi ran back out into the street and waved at one of the pedicab operators out front of the Princess Bar. When he came over to the mouth of the alley, suspicious and wary, she managed to negotiate an extortionate price to get the tourists back to the edge of Hightown. 

Without waiting for agreement, she bundled the couple into the seat, told the driver in a low voice that she'd be checking up on them later (she wouldn't) and took off at a run in the opposite direction.

Running blind through an area she'd never seen before, she located the warehouse on the dock by guess and by god and by the small army of thugs ringing it. That made her check back and study the situation. Was this all for her? No way--even if they knew someone intended to hijack the drive piling bodies up openly around the place was ridiculous. 

They were all well armed, nearly all men, looking like several groups of professional mercenaries with matching vest or crests. The groups clearly didn't like each other but were more scared of whatever might be coming out of the darkness to bother harassing the other teams. They weren't kitted out for anti-infiltration.

They were set up to go to war.

"Oh, shit," Mockingbird muttered under her breath and kicked herself into high gear. She had a feeling she knew what was coming for them and she wanted to be in and out herself before he arrived. 

She wound up having to clamber along the edge of the cold, dirty water until she could get close enough to one of the dark corners of the building. It took much longer than she liked before there was a window in the patrols and she could make a mad dash for the wall. Free climbing brick warehouses in a huge rush while soaking wet and weighed down by her tac gear was not one of her great skills but panic lent her strength and she managed to make it to the high window where she'd pre-planted a harness and the receiver for the bugs she'd installed two days ago.

Listening in to the idle chatter in Mandarin and Japanese, she thought she wasn't too late but neither was her best language. Bobbi cracked the window and eased through, keeping her weight on the harness till she was sure she had a foothold on a high beam far above the echoing, empty space.

Surefooted once she had the flat surface, she ran all the way to the far wall, where an access ladder sulked in the gloom. She put her feet on the rungs, willing the thing not to creak or sway or break off from the wall and tumble her to her death.

Especially the last one.

Inch by agonizing inch, Bobbi mad her way down the ladder until she was in a spot where she could jump safely if need be. She settled in to wait. Her black coat blended in with the shadows, her bright hair covered, her face tucked into her shoulder. She would just be another spot of blankness in the dark.

It wasn't long before one of the doors rolled up and headlights lit the room, silhouetting a group of men surrounding a small Chinese woman with a cane. The door rolled shut behind them. On the other side of the space, a man-door opened, admitting five extremely well dressed Japanese men; when four of them gestured you could see they were missing finger joints. 

The two groups met in the centre of the room, eyeing one another with distaste but respect. In silence, the un-maimed Japanese man placed a small case on the table centered there.

This was going to be the most suicidally crazy thing she had ever done and she had once jumped off a boat into a tiger shark feeding frenzy to escape a fire.

Bobbi closed her eyes and muttered "Fuck it."

Then she jumped off the ladder.

On her way down she triggered the explosives in all the light bulbs, plunging the room into darkness. Her tactical goggles tracked infra-red, body heat, sound: they painted a picture of confused men drawing a metric shit-tonne of weapons and pointing them in random directions. Thank the gods they had the discipline not to fire off randomly. 

Bobbi landed next to the table with an 'oof', then reached out and snatched the case containing the thumb drive and turned to run for the man door behind her. She vaulted a human-shaped blur in the darkness, her heart singing with triumph.

The old woman's cane hit her in the back of the knees like a bullet and as she tumbled headlong onto the concrete she was terrified her leg was broken. She kept her grip on the case as though it were a parachute and she was in a crashing plane. The final data that would prove to Fury (if he was still alive) or the US government (if they would listen) that she was _not_ a traitor was in her hands; she would be dead before she let it go. It was buried inside a mass of top secret files and confidential information but she would be able to winkle it out eventually. She managed to shoulder roll and come to her feet. The pain was intense but the leg was not broken; it bore her weight. She tucked the case into her jacket and drew her batons, forcing the left one to extend fully.

The rolling door flew upwards, the headlights flooding the space with harsh light and knife-sharp shadows and the fight was on. The only thing that saved Bobbi from dying in the first few moments of the fight was the confusion. Both groups turned on each other, not registering the tall woman as a stranger until the little Chinese woman started pointing and screaming.

Mockingbird howled with rage and happiness and charged the closest of the men, one of the Yakuza holding a large silver hand gun. He shot at her and missed and she broke his arm with a sharp shot from her baton. One of the other men drew a sword and they dueled briefly, her goggles giving her an advantage as they could track the metal of the blade without her looking at it. The sensory input was intense and disorientating except in brief spurts but it saved her life more than once in the space of seconds. He was trying hard not to edge-parry so he knew the worth of his blade; she could hear it singing whenever she struck it so she stopped reaching for him and started slapping at the metal instead. She was rewarded in moments when it sheared off half-way down its length. As he reacted to losing his weapon she managed to trip him and saw a window, a space without body heat in the blackness and charged for it. 

That was when she realized a large portion of the noise in the area was actually coming from outside. She heard men screaming and...oh, gods, she could _hear_ blood splatter.

 _He_ was here. She had to get out before he arrived. 

Mockingbird set her shoulders and sprinted head-long for the far door. A lean, compact shadow crossed over the lights of the car outside and entered the building, bringing a tide of blood-scent and a thick musk that activated every "run away in terror" instinct in her soul--and most of the long-dormant "hey, how _you_ doing?" urges in her body. The dichotomy of needing to flee and wanting to stay made her stomach lurch and spin, her vision grey out.

 _Pheromones, in his sweat,_ said Dr Morse from inside her head. 

Without thinking, Bobbi dropped to one knee, out of the line of gunfire from the group behind and laid her batons on the ground. She could not out run him and she must not activate his prey drive if she wanted to live through this.

He slaughtered all of them but for the old woman in seconds, none of them even having time to cry out. Bobbi heard him speak a few sentences of harsh Mandarin to the woman, who from the sound retrieved her cane and limped out of the room. 

He came up behind her, barely breathing hard, half-drowning her in the stench of blood. It served, at least, to mask much of the weird attractant wafting out of his pores. A hand touched her cheek from over her shoulder and with a slick wet noise a spear of bone extruded from between his knuckles. He tapped her under the eye with the point.

She flinched, suppressing a whimper.

"Hey, there blondie. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this? You trying to steal from me too?" His voice was rough and deep, holding the edge of a Japanese accent, rich with gleeful menace. If she dealt with him badly he'd dismember her joint by joint just for the fun of it.

"I was--" her voice cracked and she had to swallow hard, forcing down a mouthful of thick bitter bile, before she could speak again. She was glad for the sea water soak now; it was hiding the fact she'd pissed her pants in fear. "I was stealing from _th-th-th-them_." 

Breathlessly, she waited for his judgment to fall.  
He laughed, sounding surprised. "Honesty! And a pair of gonads! Well, aren't you a treat! Let me take a look at you."

She stood up, her knees trembling, her head down like a whipped dog. She would not make eye contact with him; she would do nothing that might provoke him. He walked around her slowly, making obscene little smacking noises with his lips.

"You've got a good build, for a thief. You look more like a professional athlete. Let me see what's under the layers. Strip," he ordered casually, as though they were not in a freezing warehouse filled with dead bodies.

Bobbi took a deep breath and let Mockingbird step forward, filling her with calm and purpose and finality. "No. Fuck you." 

She looked up and directly at him, defiantly. "If we fight, I die, I know. But I'm not a toy and I won't act like one. And I'll put as much hurt on you as I can before I go, I swear it."

He had a lean face, mixed race white/asian, with a shock of dark hair in a Mohawk cut. The creamy skin of his bare torso was covered in swirling tribal-style tattoos that seemed to writhe under his muscles. His body was just about perfect, defined and cut and exquisitely masculine. He was shorter than her, but not by much, looking compact rather than small. If he hadn't been a raving psychotic lunatic murderer and she hadn't been still half-broken by what Slade had done to her she actually might have slept with him willingly. 

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing...then he suddenly turned and leapt towards the rolled up door. 

Another man was standing there, the light shimmering off his white suit, stocky and broad and muscular. Cigar smoke billowed over his head; she could smell it through the blood.

The half-naked, blood-covered man cursed viciously. "Get the fuck out of here, old man. This was my deal."

"Yeah, and you dealt with it. She ain't part of the show." The new comer's voice was equally gruff, with a different accent, flat-er.

"You sent her? You can take her head back with you then," said the younger man from his place half-way between them. Three more claws--two on each hand now--extended and his chest started to heave.

Mockingbird stepped on her batons, flipping them up into the air and catching them deftly. All her worry and concern fell away, replaced by a warm lassitude. She was going to die here and she was going to die _well_.

"She ain't mine, kid. But I know who she does belong to and it's more trouble than it's worth. Let her be. Take the drive and I'll take her off your hands."

The bare-chested man snarled something in Japanese, so fast and fluid she couldn't understand it and the man in white answered in a similar tone. They bickered back and forth for long moments, leaving her trembling with the adrenaline dump that had been activated by the man's claws extending.

Suddenly he whipped back around to her and she screamed a little and jumped, which made him laugh.

"Give me the drive, honey. And I might give you my number if you change your mind," he leered at her.

Mockingbird took the case out of her jacket, popped it open and stared at the culmination of two and half years of running and hiding and hurting. The intell was priceless. She could leak out the less damaging stuff for a little cash, not enough to get anyone killed, but she was almost out of money. What _he_ was planning to do with it made her tremble. He could peel back layers of agents, long-term operations, blackmail, kill, pillage without concern. Hell, he'd own _her_ if he put two and two together. Without this data, she might never be able to clear her name. She'd just be a fugitive till someone caught up with her and put her down like a wounded animal. 

Well, since she was basically dead anyway.

She holstered her left baton and threw the drive...straight up. In one smooth motion she leapt after it, hammering it out of the air with her remaining baton as precise as a machine. It shot across the room, impacted the concrete wall and shattered into a billion pieces. She landed, panting a little, her head high and her mouth smiling.

"Whoopsie. Honey," she said casually.

She didn't intend to dodge when he attacked; everyone dodged. She was going to let him gut her and hammer the sword end of her baton into the back of his neck as he killed her. If she got super lucky she might sever his spine which would leave him vulnerable for, oh, maybe an hour until it healed. She knew that much about him by reputation, though she had never heard his name.

He crossed the space between them fast as a shark, from one blink to the next, claws slashing for her...

...and hitting metal. The man with the cigar had moved even faster, getting between them, extending his own claws.

They pummeled back and forth for several exchanges, claws slashing like lightning, flesh and fabric parting in motions so quick they were unseen: two tigers vying for dominance. The man in white did something so quick and smooth it looked slow and his claws were buried just below his opponent's heart. They sprang apart, the blood already slowing and stopping as the wounds in his chest healed. She suddenly tasted a different scent in the younger man's sweat: acrid and horrifying.

It might have been fear.

"Leave her be, kid. I didn't send her but I'm claiming her now. Anyone does something like _that_ I need to be hiring,"

"I don't work on my back, sport," she said calmly. "Only guys I know who dress in white suits are pimps."

"Shut up, bub," he said over his shoulder and she subsided, hope making her chest tight. 

Another snarled exchange and the younger man turned on his heel and left.

Mockingbird nodded her head and stepped back again, leaving the trembling, weak-kneed Bobbi to face the man in white. He was eyeing her from behind an eye patch and the ever present cigar smoke.

"You're brave," he commented dryly.

"I'd guess that's code for 'insane'?" 

"That too." 

They stared at each other and he nodded eventually. "You really needed that data, didn't you?"

"Yah. Without, I'm pretty much running on borrowed time. I'm being hunted by...lots of people. For about eight different reasons. So I thank you for stopping...him from gutting me but I'll be going now. Maybe I can find a nice beach on Bali to make my last stand _and_ get a last tan." She smiled sadly and turned to walk away.

He reached out and touched her arm. "Lady, you won't make it off the island with him mad at you. The only place you're safe at all right now is my bar. And staying alive is better than hunting for death; if you're alive maybe another opportunity comes up."

She stood very still till he moved his hand. "Like I said, I don't work on my back and I don't tend bar, I can barely pour a beer correctly."

"I need a bouncer."

Bobbi spun around and stared at him. "Seriously?" Something in his face made her pause. "You know who I am." It was not a question.

"Yay, I...saw someone like you once, same goggles, stick fighter. Up north, bunch of SHIELD agents caught by--"

She cocked her head. "Oh, that was _you_. Always wondered what drove the thing off. Tell me, was that really the Wendigo or just a snow fever dream?" 

"You really want to know?"

"No, actually."

"Come on. At least we can feed you and get you some clean clothes. Then you can decide. You can call me Patch."

"Patch, I think this could be the beginning--"

"Someone says that around here every damn week. Think of something else."


	5. For Queen and Country

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance Hunter is back in Bobbi's life, and his life is getting really complicated. 
> 
> Of course it's her fault.

"What are you looking at, Braddock?" Lance Hunter said after realizing the other MI13 agent had been flicking through something on his Starkphone with increasing fervor for the last few minutes.   
    
"The list of all the things in this blessed country that can kill you horribly. I'm not even half-way yet." Brian Braddock was tall and impressive looking, something of a throw back to the build of a medieval knight. He had dark brown hair that swept across a broad forehead, a chiseled jaw and very excellent teeth. His accent was smooth and posh, upper class London. They all called him 'the recruiting poster' behind his back.   
    
"I doubt we'll be here long enough to meet any of the local flora or fauna, mate," Hunter snorted in his gruff East Ender voice. "Radcliffe sent us to scoop up this ex-SHIELD agent before Interpol got her, not go surfing."   
    
"Yes, well, and I'm not really certain about that either. What's our jurisdiction here? American citizen and all that, right?"   
    
"Wanted on international warrants, apparently, and did some contract work for MI-13 and well, as per the boss, we can always release her with an apology after we've 'talked' with her."   
    
Braddock had been in Hong Kong finishing some odd little job for the ministry when Hunter passed through on his way to Sydney to snag this woman, Mallory Smith was the name he was given. He and Hunter got on well enough and he could fight like James Bond so Hunter asked him to tag along. The intell he'd been given on the target was that she was ex-black ops for SHIELD, which these days meant 90% likely to have been a HYDRA assassin.   
    
They were walking down the secure corridor again, headed towards the windowless interrogation room in the depths of the airport. Two armed guards stood next to a plain door set in the concrete. Braddock happened to get there first and showed his ID briefly, then opened the door. It swung into a small room, maybe six feet on each wall, dominated by a small table and several wire frame chairs. In the chair farthest from the door sat a figure in a short sleeved gray t-shirt with blond hair in a ponytail, visible because its head was bowed.   
    
Hunter's heart skipped a beat, as it always did when he saw golden hair pulled up like that and his mind spun its little web of remembrance of _cold winter rain on tiny, thick, ancient windows, warm skin under crisp sheets. Her sweet, throaty laugh in the early morning grey, her powerful hands digging into his shoulders..._ but she was dead of course, after all that had happened. Actually dead, he figured, after finding the carnage in the lab in Panama years ago. Her equipment, name tags still attached, had been scattered around, dragged into the dirt by animals and the elements. He'd stared at the jumble of bones in the lab for hours, willing some detail on the bare flensed skulls to jump out as her, as his Bob, so he could be sure...   
    
"Long time no see, Lancelot," his dead lover said, her voice smoothly sarcastic, striking him like a knife in the gut.   
    
Bobbi Morse raised her head, her mouth set and her eyes cold as an arctic wind.   
    
*****   
A few days before, the Princess Bar, Madripoor   
    
"Hey, hey, hey, come on now big fella. No need for the fussing, the lady just isn't that into you. Why don't you come and talk to me over at the door? Air's fresher and I'll bend the rules: you can bring the beer with you," Bobbi said in a friendly tone, watching the big Maori man's face intently. He seemed to be responding to the attention, turning to amble towards her "hostess" station near the door.   
    
The woman he'd been paying aggressive court to picked that moment to throw her beer on him. He roared in rage, going ballistic in a heartbeat. The rest of the group at the table scattered in a welter of flying chairs. The huge man raised his fists into the air...and then kept falling backwards to stretch full out on the ground. Bobbi grabbed the back of his shirt with one hand and hauled him across the floor and out the front door to lie in the gutter until he woke up.   
    
When she turned back around, nearly everyone in the bar was staring at her. She bowed, her face stern, then caught a wave from the window of the upstairs office. Patch wanted to see her.   
    
He'd already poured two glasses of the good scotch, hers barely a finger. He'd learned fast she would leave any more than that.  She sipped delicately, drawing the smoky, sweet burn across her tongue like a brand.   
    
"What'cha do down there? I couldn't really see from this angle," Patch asked, settling back in his chair with a creak and a billow of cigar smoke. Bobbi picked up her glass and wandered over to the window, watching the floor as she spoke to him.   
    
"Pocket stick strikes on a few pressure points and the liver. It's the pain that puts them down. Can't beat that size with brute force and I hate how chancy it is but when it works, you look like a god."   
    
"I was wonderin'...maybe we could have a meetin' with...him. Make peace. So you could leave the bar more, alone. It's not a bad place, Madripoor, if you're not stupid. You could make a life here."   
    
She eyed him over the cut crystal of the glass, her grey-blue eyes clear and calm. "I didn't know you cared."   
    
Patch grunted. "You're one of my people."   
    
"You pay me just fine and we both know I'd be gutted and feeding the rats by now if you weren't holding your...sword...in protection over me."   
    
He looked away and Bobbi stared at him, fascinated at the novelty of seeing _Patch_ discomfited.   
    
"Yeah, well, you're one of the good ones, I think. You were supposed to be...more, weren't yah?"   
    
"More than the bouncer in a Lowtown bar? Yeah."   
    
"More than normal. You were supposed to be special." He looked her in the eye, his expression troubled. "You were supposed to be an Avenger, weren't you?"   
    
She slugged down the majority of the liquid in her glass, leaned over and poured another splash. "And why would you say something that outlandish? Because I can fight a little?" Her voice was even but bitter as poisoned wine.   
    
"I hear stories. 'Bout someone looks like you. 'Bout a woman who trashed a Hydra field team with one working arm, crossed five borders in less than a week and killed six Deep Forest mercenaries with her bare hands on the way. 'Bout a Shield agent who walked herself out of a week-long AIM torture session. 'Bout a woman who's been tearing up secret labs and bunkers like a threshing machine for the last couple years.  Blond, tall, tough as Captain America's shield. Shoots like Hawkeye, fights like Black Widow. Smart as Stark--"   
    
Bobbi snorted, loudly. He rolled his eye.   
    
"Well, that's what the little birds are telling me," he finished in a pointed manner.   
    
"Little birds need to keep their little beaks shut before someone smashes them off," she said coldly.   
    
"They don' sing for anyone but me. But it all fits, right? Fury put together the Avengers; this lady sounds like she shoulda been one of them and she worked for him so..."   
    
"Yeah, that person sounds like they would have been on the short list for the Avengers Initiative. That person sounds like a Shield special ops agent called 'Mockingbird'. That woman was named Barbara Morse. I'm not Barbara Morse."   
    
"Yeah. You're Bobbi...Smith," he responded, his voice dripping with irony.   
    
"Sure. Sure I am. And you're...Patch."   
    
They stared at each other for a while, until Bobbi started to smile, just a little. When she did, the corners of her eyes crinkled and she looked younger, sweeter. Friendly and kind.   
    
Patch leaned back with a satisfied air. "And that's wha' I was lookin' for. Looks wrong on you, lady, so damn serious all the time."   
    
"I remember laughing. It felt nice. Haven't had much of a reason for it, since I lost that data drive."   
    
"You smashed it and it was...beautiful. Ain't seen him so pissed off in years."   
    
"Yeah, I love making powerful homicidal psychos personal enemies of mine. Really clears the mind." She looked directly at him as she said it, watching his expression.   
    
He winced, then shrugged. It was an undeniable fact, on all levels.   
    
"'Bout that...something came for you, from the same place that drive came from...and...here--" he reached into a drawer and pulled out a creased envelope, addressed to "Bobbi".  "Impressive they figured out where you were."   
    
"Yeah, I thought I was more discreet but...I may be a bit out of practice. My apologies."   
    
"I got nothing to hide."   
    
She stopped in mid reach for the envelope, staring at him incredulously until he laughed. She took the letter with exaggerated care, as though he was dangerously insane himself.   
    
There was a single hand written sheet of paper inside. Bobbi studied it intently for several minutes, her eyes quartering the page with laser like efficiency. Then she sighed and shook her head, looked the page over one more time and nodded. Patch flicked open a lighter and they both watched the paper burn.   
    
"Well?' Patch asked.   
    
"So, about that meeting you wanted to arrange...think we could make that a 'distraction' instead?"   
    
He looked sad for a long moment and she swallowed convulsively, more touched than she wanted to admit.  "You going then?"   
    
"Yeah," she said, sad and quiet again. "I think I am. My contact found another set of the data, but it's back in the States, it's probably got an expiry date and it's going to be a bitch to get at. I'm going to be running on fumes by the time I'm in striking distance and that's leaving now. So, I'll grab my things from upstairs and leave when you tell me it's safe."   
    
"Airport or docks?"   
    
"Docks. I have a standing arrangement there. And then, onward."   
    
Patch stood up, straightened his suit and tapped a plume of ash off his cigar. "You gather your bag. I'll walk you down myself."   
    
She stared at him, humbled and honored. No one, from _him_ \--and she had never asked his name mostly out of respect for Patch's clear desire not to speak it--to Tyger to the Hightown warlords would dare so much as speak to her harshly if she was with Patch.   
    
Bobbi stood up and held out her hand. "Thank you, Lo--"   
    
"Yeah, I know how smart you are, lady, don't show off," he muttered, irritated   
    
*****   
Lance Hunter took two steps back from the door when Bobbi spoke to him, grabbing Braddock by the arm and pulling him out of the room. "You," he turned to one of the guards. "Get on the phone to your boss and get more bloody men down here, armed, right away. Does she have handcuffs on? She must or you'd all be dead, just get more men, now."   
Blinking in surprise, the man obeyed.   
    
Braddock squawked, "I say!" in protest and shook himself loose. Lance elbowed in front of him and just stared at Bobbi.   
    
She looked back at him, pale and grave. She'd lost weight, the skin over her collarbone drawn down, paper thin ; she'd never been fat but any lingering plumpness about the jaw was carved off. There were new lines on her face, pain lines that ran at odds to the laughter he was used to seeing there. Her body, from the waist up that he could see, was pared down too. Her shoulders and bare arms were sleek with new muscle . There were burn patches under her ears and thin scars that were obviously whip marks against the side of her neck.  She looked breathtaking: powerful and focused and serious. How he'd always wanted her to be, without that flippant edge, that insouciant recklessness that terrified him.    
    
This was not Bobbi Morse. Not his Bob, bright and light-hearted, passionate and irreverent. Not the sharp, decisive Agent 19. Not even that other person he'd seen in her eyes when it got really hard and bad and hairy, when the bullets were flying and the blood was running and the sound of breaking bones was the loudest thing in his ears.   
    
This was a stranger, ice and steel and violence barely arrested.   
    
This was the thing he'd shied away from, the thing that had drawn him closer, spiraling into the flame that was going to burn him to death.   
    
She smiled now, openly, mockingly. It went no further than the edge of her lips. "You weren't expecting me? Interesting."   
    
"I thought you were dead," he blurted out, shocked into it. "Really dead, this time. Otherwise you'd have--"   
    
"Exposed you to a treason charge?"   
    
The resentment he'd been feeling burned away. Of course. She always considered every little detail; she would not have endangered him if he couldn't help her. No matter that he would have been in mourning. Better he cry over her than rot in jail.   
    
No. It still hurt--a lot--that she hadn't trusted him to know she was alive. 

While he was staring at her, Braddock gave him an odd look and stepped into the room. 

Hunter held his breath, waiting for the explosion of power and speed and grace that he remembered: the table sent flying, the chair she was in smashed to provide her with batons. Braddock's head a mush of bone and blood before she came for him. He'd make it at least twenty feet down the corridor but he couldn't out run her when she was still his Bob; he'd never escape from this predatory creature that wore her face. 

He had no illusions about being able to fight her. She had saved his life with a bullet hole in her side , blood draining down her leg . He been in a half-conscious stupor from the head strike, the short fall, and he could still remember the sound of hardened killers screaming as she came for them, begging for mercy. He remembered, or thought he wanted to remember, that her rage had been for his sake, not her own. 

If she wanted him dead, he was about to die.   

Bobbi settled back in her chair and brought her hands--bound in plastic zip cuffs--onto the table top. 

She looked Braddock up and down in a frankly lascivious manner. "Well, aren't you a long drink of water?" she drawled. "What's your name, sweetheart?" 

He drew up to his full height, admittedly impressive, and stared down his nose. "Agent Brian Braddock, madam. And you must be Dr. Barbara Morse. You're very spry, for a dead woman." 

"You ain't seen nothing yet, sport," she said with that cold, false smile again. For just a moment, Hunter saw a blink of confusion and concern on her face. Her mannerisms were so unlike her he was kicked off balance every time she spoke...and it seemed so was she. 

_Mockingbird,_ Hunter's memory supplied. _They called her Mockingbird, for her sarcasm and for her mimicry._ She'd been able to replicate his accent perfectly from the second time they spoke, even tough turns of phrase  some natives didn't get right all the time.  Was she doing that now, this hard bad stranger a fiction laid over top the real woman by whatever company she'd been keeping lately? He hoped so. Scary as she could be when she was herself, this person was on another level. 

"Lance, come on. Come in here and shut the door and let's have a nice cozy conversation about how fucked up my life is right now. One exit and you're about to double the guards and I think Captain Britain over here can fight from the cut of his suit. Come on, sport. Let's chat."

Hunter set his shoulders, unclipped his jacket and handed his pistol to one of the guards. "Braddock, hand over your gun."

"Didn't bring it, old man," he said in a cheerful voice. 

Hunter sighed inaudibly and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, 

Bobbi smiled again, as the lock caught...

...then lunged over the table, kicking Braddock in the chest as she came, knocking him back against the wall. Her bound hands dipped into his jacket, under his arm, and came up with a vicious little snub nosed automatic. 

"Pants aflame, hey sport?"

She turned and handed the gun to Lance and sat down again, tipping her chair back and looking at the ceiling as he opened the door and handed out the gun. When he looked at the other agent, Braddock was staring at her, open mouthed and angry.

"How the hell--"  
"I've been on the run from about eight different shadowy and ruthless organizations for, oh, an eternity now. I know where every weapon is in any room I walk into. You moved with that side free, no matter what. You were carrying." She closed her eyes and her jaw clenched. "Lance, not having guns in here doesn't make either of you any safer."  
    
Hunter shoved the small table towards her until she had to tip her chair back and scoot it into the wall. He kept shoving until she was pinned against the concrete by the furniture, her hands back in her lap. She looked at him with an honest grin on her face for the first time.

"Oooh, clever Lancelot. Clever. That'll buy you...six seconds."

He studied her with narrowed eyes. "What the hell happened to you, Bob? You're...not yourself."

"Actually, I am, sport. I just never showed you _this_ self before."

"Your pants are burnin' too."

"Aw, you'd like to think that...true, it seems I have affected some of the mannerisms of my now former boss of late, which makes the last decision I made seem even wiser." She spoke now in a precise mimicry of Braddock's high class accent, then dropped back into her normal voice. "But I'd rather talk about you. Who did you think you were here for?"

"Radcliffe sent me to snag a former Shield black-ops specialist so that part was correct, wasn't it?"

"Black ops, covert ops, espionage, wet work, science division, logistics, strategy and tactics, close combat. All true. But he didn't tell you it was me. Interesting."

They looked each other in the eye for a long time. Hunter turned away first. He was more than a little frightened by the implications of the situation. He had a feeling she'd figured the whole thing out the instant she looked up into his face and was debating how to lead him down the path as well.

Braddock sat down petulantly. "I'd heard of you by reputation, Dr. Morse. I didn't realize you and Hunter had a previous...relationship."

"He's seen me naked, yes." She threw that cold hard smile at him, pleased with his discomfort.   
   
"You never showed my much of anything, I'm starting to see," Hunter said, drawing her attention back to him. 

"You never wanted to see it."

He raised a hand in acknowledgment of that truth. 

She looked at Braddock. "Radcliffe didn't ask you to come along, did he? Have you checked your email or contacts since you sent in the diversion notice?"  
"Noooooo," Braddock said in a tight, confused voice, looking at Hunter. 

"Check now," Lance said softly.

Braddock pulled out his phone, swiped a few times. HIs facial control was good, they both only saw a slight twitch of his lips. Bobbi snorted and raised an eyebrow at Hunter, who leaned over and looked at the display.

Request denied. Access to Agent Hunter's target strictly controlled. Do not interfere. It bore Director Radcliffe's personal sign off.

"Oh, god damn it," Hunter hissed. "This is the last thing we needed."

Bobbi started to laugh. "Hey, why should you limeys get off so easy?"

"It's your bloody fault, Yankee. Your lot started it."

"Eh, I think it _technically_ started before either of us were born. I refuse to take responsibility here, unless you fess up for burning Washington."

"That was the Canadians."

"What the hell are you two going on about?" Braddock snapped.

Hunter jerked a little. The banter had felt good, right and proper, the way they used to be together when it was really working. They'd just never been able to sustain that.

"Pillow talk, Braddock. Old times, old words. Things have changed though." She nodded at Hunter. "I always knew you were rated; is he?"

"Am I rated for what?" Braddock asked, looking from one to the other.

"Yeah, sweethear'. His rating's higher than mine, actually. It's only something I can do, not my whole job."

"That's why you brought him, smart man," Bobbi said in an appreciative voice. "Were you supposed to establish the truth about me--well, the agent you came to get--from the beginning?"

Braddock sat up very straight and twitched his shoulders, freeing his arms. Hunter braced his feet against the legs of the table, holding it in place. In the old parlance of their mutual trade to 'establish the truth' about someone meant execute them.

"I was never told to do that outright, no. I didn't even read into it."

"Until that door opened and you saw my face."

"Yeah."

They studied each other carefully, both of them looking sad and tired now.

"How'd you get caught, Bob? It's not like you."

"I suspect someone with a grudge tipped off the authorities and I should have expected it. I was distracted. I was stupid. This is going to really fuck up my time table."

Hunter looked at Braddock, his breath going shallow and his chest getting tight. "What do you expect me to do, Bob? We both know what's going on here, right? Do you expect me to let you go?"

"Lance, I expect you to do your duty. To Queen and Country."

She flipped the table at the end of the sentence, her hands inexplicably free. Braddock was on top of her in the next heartbeat, punching her in the face once, twice. She ducked the third blow, kicked him in the shin hard enough the pain got through his battle adrenaline high, made him miss his next strike up under her chin. She moved so fast Hunter couldn't see her hands but for a blur; she had always been good but whatever pressures she'd been under in the years since he'd seen her had honed her to a razor edge. She landed a slap to Braddock's eyes from under his own arm that sent his head back, then walked her blows down his torso, throat, solar plexus, diaphragm. Each punch was clean, precise and massively powerful, delivered with perfect body mechanics from start to finish. Practically inhuman.

In that moment, Lance Hunter let go of his care for her, his mourning, his hopes. This was not the woman he'd wanted to spend his life with. That person was dead, indeed. This was someone, something, so far beyond him she was like a star in the sky. He would always love his Bob; Mockingbird he could respect and admire. Only that. She would be the literal death of him, what she was now.

What she had always been, he realized.   
    
Braddock went down on his knees, no air in his lungs and she punched him in the jaw, using the weight of her body and a gravity assist. He fell forward, stunned and gasping.   
    
Bobbi grabbed Hunter by the shirt and hauled him up, a small wicked knife held to his throat. That was how she'd gotten out of the cuffs.

"Open the door Lance," she hissed at him, then leaned in and kissed his cheek. "For old times sake."

"Don't kill them," he said calmly.

"Don't make me."

She reached past him and opened the door. As it swung open she looked at him the same way she looked at him before she knocked him off a boat into the Thames on the their first "date", the same way she looked at him before running naked into the hedge maze at a Yorkshire manner with three members of the Royal Family potentially witnessing it. 

He loved her for that look, and feared her for what came after.

She stepped back and kicked him into the corridor so that he flew sprawling past the now augmented guards, who were not ready for her. They wouldn't have been ready with five days notice and a flamethrower. She came out after him, low and fast and he heard the noise she made, nearly sexual, when she realized one of them had a collapsible baton in his hand.

From the ground, Lance watched her take it away from him like plucking a toy from a child and proceed to lay out six armed men in just under ten seconds. He heard Braddock groan inside the room. That hard bad look dropped over her and she very clearly turned to kill him.

"Bob, don't. If you ever loved me, don't."

He didn't shout it, he barely whispered. She heard him, though.

And she stopped.

It was his Bobbi who shrugged then and dropped to her knees next to his prone form. She lowered her head to his, her pony tail trailing over her shoulder, her eyes bright. "I did, you know. I really did," she said, softly, then kissed him again, on the mouth. It was brief and sweet and deep and the most heart-wrenching good-bye he'd ever been a part of. Her breath whispered out next to his ear and the next thing he heard was the sound of her running down the corridor.

Lance Hunter lay on his back and thought deeply about the last hour of his life until Braddock's bruised and humiliated face appeared above him. 

"You slept with that...witch?" Braddock said in a wondering tone. "Magic is the only way to explain what she just did."

"Crazy women are great in bed," Lance responded as Braddock helped him up. "But no, that wasn't magic. That was just natural talent and diamond hard will and being about eight million times smarter than both of us."  
    
Braddock looked at him sideways. "You were having a conversation with her that I could not even hear, under the words. What was that about, Hunter?"

Lance Hunter paused for a long time, thinking back on everything he knew about Braddock. He looked over at the groaning pile of guards. "We should start looking for her...we won't find her but we need to go through the motions. And after that, we'll talk, Braddock. We'll talk."

*****

London, a week later.

Hunter straightened up as the committee came back into the meeting room, lead by the Director of MI-13--Radcliffe--looking deeply disgruntled. So, he was probably _not_ about it be executed for treason.

That regal older blond woman took the lead, the one no one would name other than "Madam Counselor".

"Agent Hunter, considering your testimony, and that of Agent Braddock--"she nodded in his direction, sitting quietly in the corner near the other door"--we are inclined to believe your assertion that you were surprised beyond reason to see Agent 19--Barbara Morse--alive. Given the surveillance footage available it is clearly true that she was physically capable of over-powering both of you, and the audio available from the corridor would seem to prove you prevented her from killing Agent Braddock before she fled. The only question we have left is a serious one, however." 

She looked down the table, at Radcliffe and the rest of the secret tribunal. The heads of MI-5 and MI-6 were there, some Downing Street wonk he'd seen in the corridors, a woman Hunter had never met, very young and scared. Two armed guards flanked the main door, Braddock was in full field kit and Lance was pretty sure the Counselor was capable of breaking all their necks without breaking a sweat.  
    
"Agent Morse had been searched and X-Rayed prior to being handcuffed and secured in that room. She was not carrying a knife at that time; Agent Braddock was not carrying a knife when she accosted him. Can you shed any light as to where she might have gotten the blade?"

"Oh, yeah," Hunter said with a nod. "I gave it to her, under the table."

Radcliffe slammed his hand down. "I bloody told you. I told you it was him. Bloody bint always had his head in a twist."

"Control yourself, Director." The Counselor nodded at Hunter. "Would you care to explain why you would do that? Bearing in mind that your answer might incriminate you in an act of treason and the violation of international law."

Hunter stood up and assumed a military rest posture, hands behind him. "Counselor, I worked very closely with Agent Morse--Agent 19--during her time as the Shield liaison here in London. Yes, during that time she and I began and maintained a romantic relationship. She left abruptly before the Invasion of New York and never returned. It was commonly believed she was dead. I knew for a fact she had survived the Invasion but believed she had been killed in Panama over two years ago. Evidence suggested she had been with a crew of Hydra agents on a field mission gone wrong at the point when Captain America and Black Widow brought down Pierce; I located a number of bodies and equipment at the location, some of which bore her name. At about the same time, information was floated that suggested she had been Hydra herself--"  
"Get the to point, man," Radcliffe snarled.

"Quiet, Director. Do not make me say it again. Go on, Agent Hunter."

"I unequivocally did not believe she was a traitor. I mourned her death as a fellow agent. I was shocked when I saw her in that room, yes, but it also made sense when I thought about the circumstances. She was certainly cut adrift from her former agency--so why had she not come to me? As a friend, if nothing else. Our nations are allies and she was well liked here. Other Shield agents had sought refuge with our government--most of them are now our employees. The only reason I could think for her refusal to ask for assistance is that she believed that MI-13 was corrupted by Hydra too. All the data released by Black Widow was regarding the American operation but that didn't mean the infection hadn't spread into other agencies. Bobbi was a high level agent--she did analysis for Director Fury himself--she had access to information very few people would have seen. Within a few sentences of our initial conversation, she had dropped several code phrases that indicated to me she had good reason to think the corruption had spread across the Atlantic. Yes, that could have been intended to throw me off guard but...I trusted my gut. And my gut was telling me she was right, especially since I had been sent there specially by Director Radcliffe, diverted from another mission. Director Radcliffe had to have known who she was--they would have sent a visual for confirmation of identity--so he would have known who he was sending me to apprehend. Though you weren't were you sir? You sent me there to kill her."

"I thought you'd be grateful. She threw you over." Radcliffe made a dismissing gesture. "She was a traitor and she'd made a fool of you. I thought it was a kindness, to give you some...um...closure." 

"You sent me to kill her, Radcliffe." Hunter's voice had gone flat and cold. In the corner, Braddock stood up and freed his sidearm. "You sent me to kill my Bob. You shouldn't have done that."

"Are you threatening me, you jumped up little piker?" Radcliffe was on his feet now too, tall and lean and angry.

Hunter glanced away from him contemptuously. "Counselor, Bobbi said two things that got me thinking. One of them is on the tape: 'Do your duty. To Queen and Country'. The other one she whispered in my ear there, at the end. She said: 'Dunwich is under water.'"

"Dunwich? From Lovecraft?" said the young woman in a surprised voice.

"Dunwich is the name of a secret computer server, one that had been wiped off the records around the same time she started working with us. It contained all the data from our special missions and we were told had been destroyed at the end of the project, as was protocol. It hadn't been. It had been moved to a secret sub-basement under the public pool fifteen blocks from here. She and I had found the safe room on an old map from just post World War Two. We'd sneak out during the day to make out there. She called it our 'under water grotto'." Hunter drew his hands out from behind his back and revealed the gun he'd pulled out of his waistband.

Everyone was looking at Radcliffe now. The two people closest to him, the Counselor and the other woman, had both moved away. Hunter addressed him directly again, fury palpable in every line of his body and syllable of his voice.

"The Dunwich server had been reconfigured to collect and store the classified data from the Director's computer. It was all being fed there, for years now. A treasure trove of intelligence, waiting for someone to turn it over to...god knows who. Hydra? The highest bidder?"

"Which was it, Radcliffe?" That was Braddock, his own voice cold and angry. "Was it just insurance or was there a plan?"

"Counselor you cannot possibly believe this ridiculous nonsense. He's trying to save his own worthless hide. Secret servers hidden under a pool? Please!"

"The good lady does not need to believe anything. She need only do her duty to Queen and Country. To Us, Director Radcliffe."

The door behind Radcliffe had opened silently while Hunter was speaking, admitting several very well armed guards with set and serious faces. In their midst was a small iron haired woman, dressed in an immaculate tailored suit. It was she who had spoken. Everyone at the table leapt to their feet.

Radcliffe's face went so white Hunter thought he might be about to faint. He turned and looked at the Her Majesty, the Queen of England and All Her Other Realms and Territories. 

"Commander Hunter," she inclined her head to him. "We and our privy council have examined the evidence you set before us at length and are satisfied that your accusations against the former Director of MI-13 are most thoroughly proven. Radcliffe, have you anything to say in your defense?"

Radcliffe stared at her, open mouthed and bug eyed, his lips moving silently.

"What, not even a 'Hail Hydra'?" asked Braddock in a cold voice.

"Thank you, Baronet Braddock. That will be enough," the Queen said.

Braddock subsided, looking chagrined. 

Hunter saluted his Queen crisply. "I was only doing my duty, Your Majesty. I'm sorry it took Bobbi kicking my arse to get me to catch on."

"We will be entering a commendation for Agent Morse into the record directly, Commander Hunter. Regretfully Top Secret of course but when she reappears we give you permission to advise her."

"I pray I get the chance, Ma'am."

"Stephen Radcliffe, We have found you guilty of high treason against our crown and the people of the United Kingdom. We offer you one more opportunity to explain or excuse yourself."

"If you bring me to trial, I swear I'll tell the media everything! I'll--"

"Ain't going to be a trial, mate," said Hunter just before he placed the muzzle of his gun against Radcliffe's head and emptied it into his ear canal. Radcliffe dropped like a stunned steer, a thin trail of blood the only evidence of the mortal wound. 

"I say, why is there no exit hole?" the Downing Street man asked brightly.

".22 bullets. Just bounce around inside the skull, like a lethal pinball machine," Hunter said absently. He holstered the gun and turned to salute the Queen again. "Thank you, Ma'am, for letting me be the--" He stopped, non-plussed.

"The instrument of your Royal Justice?" Braddock offered, very dryly. 

"Yeah, thanks mate." Hunter threw him an equally dry look.

"We are distressed at the necessity of such shadowy and secret machinations but we were convinced by the eloquent pleading of our closest advisors that anything else would result in a disaster for out intelligence operations. I do hope such a thing will never be necessary again, Director Hunter."

Hunter did a double-take, looking at Braddock with a 'Did I hear that?' expression. The other man nodded, briskly.

"Ma'am. Your Majesty. I'm not...Director? It's not one of my skill sets. There are three people in this room who'd be better at it than me. I'd never want the job."

"And that is the very reason we are reassured that the position should be yours. We have faith in you, in your sense of duty and your loyalty. You have our trust, Director Hunter. Now put your house in order, be certain none of Radcliffe's rot spread any further than his office. Jenny, I would take tea with you. Please come along."

She turned and left the room with her bodyguards, followed by the Counselor, who smiled at Hunter before she left. The rest of them came up, clapping him on the back and congratulating him as the young woman walked out into the corridor and came back in with brace of blank-faced men in workman's clothing, carrying a body bag. She gave them crisp disposal instructions and so he learned she was named Meghan: the brand new head of the counter-intelligence wing of...his...organization. 

Braddock tried to sneak out behind the body till Hunter called him back.

"This was your suggestion, wasn't it mate?"

"It was me or you, Lance, and I thought if it was me I'd just go cut my throat on the way home and save ever so many steps."

"Yeah, well, you weaseled out of the big job but you're not getting off scot free. You're my new Deputy Director. Let's go look at our offices."

Hunter's head was swimming with the emotional turmoil and wrenching change of the last few hours but he spared a thought for the woman who'd caused it all.

 _Where are you Bob? Be safe, love. This world's a poorer place without you._

*****

New Jersey. Cross Enterprises Industrial Park. After Midnight.

Bobbi pried open the window on the top floor of the main warehouse, sliding feet first into the empty office. It was clean and neat and she left it undisturbed. The server with the information she needed was air-gapped, isolated in the basement of this building or the next one over. She'd started here because the security wasn't as tight. In fact, she had no idea how she was going to get into the other building. She'd have to improvise.

She made her way down to the main floor, walking silently in her tac gear, full body suit and weapons. This was her last ditch, her last gasp. She wasn't going to fail here because of bad equipment.

Turning the corner of a large piece of gleaming machinery in the darkness, someone reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her into the wall. She hit hard, pushed off hard and punched the figure, a man, in the gut really really hard.

He faded back with a grunt and came at her again. She was a little shocked; no rent-a-cop should be able to take that punch like it was nothing. 

While she was thinking that, her body was reacting as it was trained. As he rushed her she dropped onto her back, kicked her feet into his hips and flipped him up and over her head, using his momentum against him. He landed hard on his back and she followed him up, straddling his torso and bringing her fist back to clock him in the face.

For the first time she saw him clearly.

"Barton?"


End file.
